Monthly Archives: March 2014

Genocide Without Reflection: The Noah Movie Is Horrible

Posted on March 31, 2014 by

I saw the Noah movie. It’s bad. Really, really bad. It’s such a comedown from director Darren Aronovsky’s previous film, The Black Swan, which was really, really good. Where to start with Noah? How about with the gender stereotyping and racism? The … Continue reading →

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Creationists Win Another Pyrrhic Victory Over Evolution

Posted on March 30, 2014 by

When I learned that, in South Carolina, two Republican young earth creationists recently blocked the adoption of the woolly mammoth as the state’s official fossil (all but seven states have one) because they don’t want people reminded of evolution, I thought … Continue reading →

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Peter Ward Can’t Sleep at Night

Posted on March 30, 2014 by

The short reason: __________ The longer explanation (at YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPRUggIb-NI __________ In Ward’s view, the two most urgent problems surrounding human caused climate change are the following: Mass extinction. When the poles heat up (as has happened in other periods … Continue reading →

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Alan Sokal on Faith

Posted on March 29, 2014 by

Physicist Alan Sokal, the famed skewer of postmodernism, in an article at Massimo Pigliucci’s Scientia Salon, gives faith a well deserved towel snap: “Faith” is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. “Faith” … Continue reading →

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What is Information? A Three Word Definition

Posted on March 27, 2014 by

The three word definition. The physicist Brian Greene, in his book The Hidden Reality (Knopf 2011), gives the best definition of information I’ve ever encountered: So, you start to ponder. What actually is information, and what does it do? Your … Continue reading →

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Wikipedia Won’t Let People Post Woo On Wikipedia, And That Makes Woo Promoters Upset

Posted on March 26, 2014 by

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, responds to alternative medicine woo pushers seeking easier criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia articles:

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Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons Get a Towel Snap

Posted on March 25, 2014 by

From Leon Wieseltier at The New Republic: At the conclusion of his poems about the rescue of the Ghent Altarpiece [from a salt mine after WWII], Kirstein wrote: “How marble molds itself into flesh, paint kindles gold in shafts / Makes me witness salvation … Continue reading →

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Fred Phelps (1929-2014): The Logician Made Flesh

Posted on March 25, 2014 by

He’s dead, but who was Fred Phelps, really? He was a logician; a logician made flesh; the reductio ad absurdum of the anti-gay rights movement. God hates fags. It’s right there in the Bible. Thus he believed, thus he preached, … Continue reading →

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Cosmic Inflation? John Horgan Taps the Brakes

Posted on March 20, 2014 by

Science writer John Horgan (who is not a physicist) is intrigued by the recent evidence for the theory of cosmic inflation, but is also holding out for some additional confirmation, support, and explanation before he buys what some prominent physicists, … Continue reading →

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Does the Recent Discovery of Cosmic Inflation Bolster the Multiverse Hypothesis?

Posted on March 19, 2014 by

Apparently it does, and that considerably. This comes via Space.com: The new research also lends credence to the idea of a multiverse. This theory posits that, when the universe grew exponentially in the first tiny fraction of a second after the … Continue reading →

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Bill Maher on Noah’s Ark and the New Noah’s Ark Movie

Posted on March 18, 2014 by

The subject is Noah’s ark and the new Noah’s ark movie. Bill Maher engaging in some sustained and gleeful–and very, very funny–blasphemy. (That is, if God and biblical literalists can take a joke.)

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The Cosmic Gun Smokes

Posted on March 18, 2014 by

Imagine positing a theory about the origin of the cosmos, then predicting something odd and otherwise implausible that one would find if the theory were true. Then imagine finding it. That’s what happened. This is via USA TODAY and The … Continue reading →

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What Hillary Will Win In 2016

Posted on March 16, 2014 by

The Supreme Court. A reader at Andrew Sullivan’s blog makes the point concisely: A president Clinton will have […] a very gray Supreme Court (FOUR octogenarians in her first term).  Think about what that means for all those Voting Rights Act cases … Continue reading →

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Aquinas and Dante On Homosexuality

Posted on March 14, 2014 by

Louis Crompton. Homosexuality and History (Harvard 2003), by Louis Crompton, is by far the best general history of homosexuality yet written, and in his chapter on the medieval world, he has a fascinating discussion of Thomas Aquinas’s and Dante’s treatment of … Continue reading →

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Who Is Your Neighbor?

Posted on March 13, 2014 by

Sharing with a stranger–one of the better angels of our nature–is on display in this YouTube: __________ The video is moving, but why is it moving? Why don’t we have similar responses, say, to adult alcoholics who are homeless, cold, … Continue reading →

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By What Criteria Should One Evaluate Shakespeare?

Posted on March 12, 2014 by

In the Preface to his eight-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays (1765), the literary critic Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) had some opinions about what makes Shakespeare so good. Here they are. See if you agree (and notice how many of them are … Continue reading →

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God’s Hiddenness

Posted on March 11, 2014 by

This video explains it: ___________ As the above video nicely, if ironically, illustrates, the hiddenness of God is a serious problem. And academic books have been written on the issue. One is titled Divine Hiddenness: New Essays (edited by Daniel … Continue reading →

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President Obama and Vice President Biden Promote Running and Hydration

Posted on March 10, 2014 by
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Are Fussy Egg Handlers Rational?

Posted on March 10, 2014 by

Are you a fussy egg handler, quickly washing your hands after touching raw eggs and never, never licking batter from a spoon or bowl if a raw egg has been mixed with it (for fear of salmonella)? In terms of … Continue reading →

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13.7 Billion Years Divided By 365: 40 Million Years Is A Day; A Day, 40 Million Years

Posted on March 9, 2014 by

In the debut episode of the new Cosmos series, hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Hand Stuever of The Washington Post describes the football field sized cosmological calendar that Tyson uses to put our 13.7 billion-year-old big bang universe into time … Continue reading →

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